


Rules to Bend, Rules to Break

by Cleo the Muse (cleothemuse)



Series: Grampa Steve's Bedtime Stories [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, But Kind of Is Anyway, F/M, Gen, Not A Fix-It, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Time Travel, it's complicated - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-17
Updated: 2019-05-17
Packaged: 2020-03-06 03:30:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18842725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cleothemuse/pseuds/Cleo%20the%20Muse
Summary: Morgan hates rules: rules are stupid, rules were made to be broken, rules do not apply to baby geniuses. Grampa Steve is sympathetic.Meanwhile, Captain Steve learns about the rules of the multiverse from Doctor Strange.





	Rules to Bend, Rules to Break

**Author's Note:**

> This story uses my personal custom work skin for some simple formatting shortcuts, and should not interfere with any accessibility accommodations you may have enabled. However, if you find the formatting in some areas seems a bit off to you or if it _is_ interfering with your accessibility, please drop me a line @cleothemuse on Twitter.

“It’s not fair,” Morgan finally said.

Grampa Steve was making sandwiches in the kitchen, but he looked up when she spoke. “It seldom is,” he answered, dipping the table knife back into the peanut butter.

“Miz Galloway is _mean_ ,” she insisted, very glad _somebody_ was on her side. Mommy had said she was very disappointed in her, and expected her to behave better tomorrow. Even Uncle Happy had frowned at her after Miz Galloway finished telling him about her day.

“Oh?”

Throwing a sigh and rolling her eyes a little like Mommy sometimes did when she was on the phone with someone called The Board—which sounded like the _worst_ superhero name ever imagined, and Morgan had once called herself "Rainbow Girl" for a full week before realizing she could do much better—she slumped further in her chair. “She made me sit in the corner today.”

Grampa Steve made a little humming noise as he opened the jar of blackberry jelly. “And why would she make you do that?”

“She said it was because I broke the rules, but rules are _stupid_.”

“All rules, Little Bug, or just the rules you broke?”

“ _All_ rules, Grampa Steve.”

Grampa Steve nodded. “So which rules did you break?”

Morgan held out her left hand so she could count off the stupid rules with the opposing pointer finger. “Raise your hand, wait to be called on, don’t talk out of turn, and don’t argue with the teacher.”

“Hmm… _most_ of those seem like okay rules to me… not sure about that last one, though, ‘cause I’ve argued with teachers _plenty_ of times.”

She crossed her arms again and thrust out her lower lip. “Rules are _stupid_.”

“If you say so, Little Bug,” he answered, walking around the island to serve her a glass of milk and the sandwich he’d just made.

The sandwich was _wrong_ : not only did he cut it only _once_ , he cut it from top-to-bottom, and it was _lopsided_ with one side clearly bigger than the other and the cut not even straight up-and-down. “Grampa Steve!” she gasped, pointing at the bad sandwich in horror, “you cut it wrong!”

“Did I?” he asked, spreading peanut butter on another slice of bread. “Is there some _rule_ saying how I should cut a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?”

“Grampa Steve! You _know_ you’re supposed to...” Morgan stopped, her mouth forming a little ‘o’ of surprise.

“So there _are_ some rules you think are good,” he noted with a crooked smile, switching the plate with the bad sandwich for one that was cut the right way: corner-to-corner into four neat triangles. “Not all rules are bad, Little Bug. Take gravity, for instance: useful rule, gravity. ‘What goes up must come down’.”

“Umlef oo er a thoot lie om-eeth,” Morgan answered around a mouthful of sandwich.

“I didn’t understand a word of that. Guess ‘no talking with food in your mouth’ is a good rule, too, hmm?”

A big gulp of milk cleared out the gooey mush in her mouth. “Unless you wear a suit like Mommy’s!”

Grampa Steve nodded, taking a bite of his lopsided sandwich and similarly washing it down. “Or if you can fly on your own like Aunt Carol or Aunt Wanda or Uncle Thor or Uncle Rhodey with his suit or Aunt Hope or Uncle Sam with their wings—”

“Yeah!”

“—but they all have to land eventually, else your mom couldn’t give you goodnight kisses, Aunt Carol couldn’t teach you how to climb trees—”

Morgan found her opening. “That’s another stupid rule! Maggie at play-group says girls aren’t supposed to climb trees.”

Grampa Steve clutched at his chest dramatically. “That _is_ a stupid rule. Now, _gravity_ being a rule means if you lost your grip while climbing a tree, you’d fall and get hurt if Aunt Carol wasn’t there to catch you—”

“Stupid rule,” Morgan insisted, taking another big bite out of her sandwich.

He nodded again. “But gravity’s also what keeps air around our planet and keeps the Earth rotating around the Sun. Gravity’s a _good_ rule, even if it is inconvenient sometimes. It’s a good rule for bending now and then, but you don’t want it completely _broken_.”

She tried to imagine, for a moment, what not having gravity would be like: she could float around wherever she wanted, but what if she accidentally floated up into the sky and couldn’t get back down? If one of her aunts or uncles who could fly wasn’t there, she might end up floating off into space!

“Bend it,” she reluctantly agreed, “don’t break it.” She picked up her second sandwich triangle and chomped down on it thoughtfully. Daddy and Mommy and Uncle Rhodey all used their suits to _bend_ the rule of gravity, not to break it. Daddy had once told her “I fully expect you to be, like, a hundred times smarter than me someday”, so it stood to reason she could find a way to bend gravity on her own one day, too.

“Captain Steve broke a lot of stupid rules,” Grampa Steve began just as she started into her third wedge, “but he also broke a few rules he probably should have only _bent_ a little.”

“Captain Steve floated off into space?”

He laughed, the noise making Morgan’s shoulders twitch with happiness. “No, nothing like that. But I guess you could say that wisdom is learning which rules should be bent versus which should be broken, and Captain Steve wasn’t always wise.”

“Like the time he tried to stop a charging rhino and had to be rescued by Princess Shuri?”

“ _Exactly_ like that. Newton’s Laws of Motion: those are some other good rules to live by.”

“An object in motion will remain in motion, an object at rest will remain at rest,” Morgan recited.

“That’s number one. Number two?”

“Force is the product of mass and acceleration.”

“And number three?”

“For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.”

“So, how much force would it take to successfully stop a charging rhino?”

Morgan crammed the rest of the sandwich wedge into her mouth while she thought about it. Grampa Steve had taken her to the Bronx Zoo a few weeks ago, and she remembered how _huge_ the rhinos had looked: each was as tall as Grampa Steve and as wide and as long as a car. “How much does a rhino weigh?” she asked after she’d swallowed her food.

“An adult male Wakandan rhinoceros averages 3600 kilograms,” Miss Friday answered, “and can run at speeds up to 50 kilometers per hour.” Helpfully, she also floated the numbers and appropriate equations over the kitchen island.

Morgan took another drink of her milk, then started drawing the calculations in the air. “How much distance to stop the rhino?”

Grampa Steve stroked his chin. “Hmm… there were only about five meters between Captain Steve and the goat pen.”

She nodded and went back to drawing the numbers. “Just under 70 kilonewtons,” she finally declared. “That’s not _that_ much.”

“That’s roughly the amount of force needed to pick up an empty 20-foot box truck,” Miss Friday corrected. “While ‘not that much’ for someone like Doctor Banner or Captain Danvers, it is indeed a force far exceeding the capabilities of a normal, un-augmented human.”

“But Captain Steve’s not a normal human!”

Grampa Steve shrugged. “No, but not being a normal human’s not enough of a reason to break _all_ the rules.”

“But maybe bend them?”

“If there’s a good enough reason to bend them, then maybe.”

“What would be a good reason to bend the rules?”

He pushed his empty plate aside. “Depends on the rule, depends on the situation. Gravity for example: good rule most of the time, but when would you want to bend it?”

“To get to the top of a building faster!” Morgan decided. “Or to get down from a tree without getting hurt.”

Grampa Steve nodded. “Both of those are very good reasons, Little Bug. If you built a device to bend the rules of gravity, would it be okay to use it to make Ms. Galloway float into the ceiling and bang her head?”

Morgan grinned at the image. “No, I guess that would be bad.”

“What about ‘no stealing’: rule to break or rule to bend?”

“Neither! Stealing’s bad!” Morgan protested.

“Is it?” Grampa Steve countered. “What if a super villain had a weapon that could turn everyone’s arms and legs into wet spaghetti noodles—” she giggled, thinking of the silly _Octodad_ game Petey and Ned showed her last week “—and the only way Ant-Man and Wasp could stop him was to break into his secret lair and steal the weapon away from him?”

She pushed the last bite of sandwich into her mouth. “I gef na awee ba.”

Grampa Steve made a face and rubbed at his right ear with his knuckle. “My hearing must be going bad in my old age.”

“I guess not always bad!” Morgan repeated once she’d swallowed her food and gotten the peanut butter unstuck from the roof of her mouth.

“Okay, so ‘no stealing’ is also usually a good rule, but it’s not _always_ bad to bend it a little as long as the motivations are good. You know what’s another rule that’s usually a good one?” he began, standing up to collect their empty plates. “‘Bath and brush before bed’.”

She wrinkled her nose. “How is that _not_ a bad rule?”

“Because you don’t get to hear another of _Captain Steve’s Adventures_ without them.”

Morgan bolted for the bathroom.

Three-quarters of an hour later, she was scrubbed clean, in her jammies, and her teeth were free of any lingering traces of peanut butter or blackberry jelly. Grampa Steve had puttered around in the kitchen washing up the dishes while she got ready for bed, but grabbed his cane and a tablet and joined her when she yelled she was ready.

First up was a video chat with Mommy, where Morgan reluctantly apologized for breaking the rules at school today and promised she’d also apologize to Miz Galloway and _try_ to do better tomorrow. Then there was a kiss for Mommy, a kiss for Daddy’s picture, and then Grampa Steve turned off the bedside lamp and settled into the armchair as Miss Friday filled the ceiling with thousands of tiny points of light.

“Captain Steve wasn’t always good at following rules,” Grampa Steve began. “But sometimes there are rules you just _can’t_ break.”

*       *       *

“Captain, a word?”

Steve turned away from the observation window, surprised to see Doctor Strange this far upstate. “Of course, Doctor. What do you need?”

The Sorcerer Supreme attempted to speak, but had to quickly dodge out of the way as a pair of dog-sized worker ants walked past carrying a large steel beam between them. He stared after the bugs in amazement for a long moment, then shook his head and started again. “I heard that Doctor Banner was nearly finished rebuilding the quantum gateway.”

Steve waved a hand toward the window, beyond which were Bruce, Hank Pym, and Janet van Dyne, their heads close together as they worked over a small piece of equipment. “They’re to the ‘arguing how to make it better’ stage, it seems, so I’d say they’re close. Another week or two at most, maybe. What’s up?”

“Is Captain Danvers still planning to join you on this mission?”

He blinked, getting the impression Doctor Strange already knew the answer. “She’s been called away to deal with an issue on the Kree-Shi’ar border and isn’t sure when she’ll be back, so it looks like it’ll be just me.”

Strange nodded. “How much do you know about the multiverse?”

“The basics, I guess. There’s an infinite number of universes out there, diverging and occasionally colliding with one another as they progress along their timelines. The closer those other universes are to our own, the smaller the changes are, but the further away you go, the bigger the differences get and the harder it is to break through the quantum barrier, let alone spend any time there, due to… I think Tony called it ‘entropy’?”

“That’s a fairly accurate summary.” Strange closed his eyes for a moment, gathering his thoughts. “While retrieving the Stones, you and your team entered three alternate realities where the actual differences between their timelines and ours was infinitesimal; that is, right up to the point where your presence interfered and the removal of the Stones caused a fracture.”

“Yeah, your predecessor warned Bruce about that,” Steve admitted. “She said that if we didn’t return each Stone to its originating timeline at roughly the same point at which it was removed, those realities would become unstable.” He nodded toward the lab window. “Thus ‘the mission’.”

“Indeed they would. The Infinity Stones are part of the universe itself, therefore removing one of them to an alternative universe could have catastrophic consequences for the universe from which it was removed, and the ripple effect would surely damage the multiverse around it.”

Steve frowned, crossing his arms over his chest. “The Infinity Stones from _this_ universe have been destroyed, but our universe doesn’t seem to have been affected.”

“The Stones are _part of the universe itself_ ,” Strange repeated. “Thanos couldn’t actually _destroy_ them, but it will probably take several eons before the Stones are able to fully coalesce again.” He shrugged. “Certainly not a problem any of us need worry about.”

“I’ll put it on my calendar, just in case,” Steve joked.

—

“Captain Steve is funny,” Morgan declared.

“He has his moments,” Grampa Steve agreed.

—

“But I take it you didn’t drop by just to quiz me on multiverse theory?”

Strange spread his hands wide. “I was hoping to borrow the Time Stone and help you chart a path forward, since it will be just you going. I have confidence in your ability to carry out this task on your own, of course, but some of the places you must go are places to which you have never been, and the quantum tunnel alone cannot take you there.”

Steve gestured again to the window. “That’s one of the things they’re having trouble figuring out. During the first mission, the 2014 team could portal directly to Morag because Nebula had been there before at a time relatively close to the proper point of insertion. Clint and Natasha then had to take a ship to Vormir because none of us had ever been _there_ before. And Tony and I had to coordinate our quantum navigators together to go back to 1970 because while he was born around that time, only I had been to the location we needed. 

“But I’ve never been to Morag or Vormir, let alone to Asgard. Bruce was initially hoping to borrow and shrink a spaceship again—Danvers had promised to show me how to fly it so I could get to Asgard while she hit Morag and Vormir—but Doctors Pym and van Dyne are adjusting the navigators to follow our previous return trails and hopefully bypass that need.”

“You have the Space Stone,” Strange reminded him. “Just use that.”

He frowned. “That’s dangerous.”

Strange cocked his head sideways.“Not as much as you’d think. Generally speaking, an Infinity Stone is dangerous to touch with bare hands by those without sufficient will to avoid accidentally using it, let alone anyone lacking the physical ability to withstand the energy the Stone channels through the wielder.”

Steve nodded soberly, knowing all-too-well the price that was paid the last time someone wielded all six Infinity Stones. “Quill mentioned a slave girl grabbing the Power Stone and being destroyed by it, though, and it took his whole team standing united to channel it against Ronan the Accuser.”

“I’d hardly consider Quill or his team to be exemplars of disciplined minds,” Strange replied drily.

—

“Uncle Peter’s kinda crazy, but I like all his weird music.”

“His music’s not weird, it’s just a little old.”

Morgan patted his hand. “Grampa Steve, you’re old _and_ weird.”

“You make a fair point, Little Bug.”

—

“The Eye of Agamotto was created to serve as both a container and channel for the Time Stone,” the sorcerer continued, gesturing to the amulet around his neck. “It protects the bearer from accidentally triggering the Stone’s power with an ill-timed thought, provides a conduit through which its power can be used, and serves as a buffer to prevent too _much_ power from being drawn.”

“Sort of like a surge protector.”

“More or less. The scepter the Mind Stone was brought to this world in was another such conduit, and I believe Quill mentioned Ronan having done the same with his warhammer? I’m certain you can use Mjolnir in the same way: she’s a very powerful artifact and you’ve already shown yourself capable of safely channeling a lot of power through her; I think she’ll serve you well in that capacity.”

Steve scrubbed at the back of his neck, remembering the way he had seemed to become something _more_ with Thor’s hammer in his hand. It was almost like stepping out of the Vita-Ray chamber and taking those first full breaths with lungs that had greater capacity than he’d ever dreamed, and somehow _knowing_ he was capable of running fast enough to keep up with a speeding taxi or able to effortlessly leap over a fence his own new height. With Mjolnir in his hand, he knew instantly that he was stronger and faster, that he was _mighty_. Calling down lightning had been purely on instinct, as had summoning the hammer back to his hand. From the instant he laid his hand on her grip on the battlefield, he just _knew_ what they could do together.

Just as he knew all he needed to do was call for her with his mind and she’d come straight to him, he also knew what Strange was telling him was true: Mjolnir would be capable of safely channeling the power of an Infinity Stone, and she’d also be able to lend him the extra strength needed to withstand that power. “Okay, so that’s one less problem to solve, I suppose, which means I’ll need to visit Morag and Vormir both before I take her and the Reality Stone back to Asgard.”

Strange nodded. “It’s also possible you may need to use other Stones to complete your mission, which may affect the order in which you return them. It would be _terrible_ if you had to go back and steal a Stone you just replaced so that you can finish restoring another Stone.”

“I’d meet myself coming and going,” Steve joked, then gestured for the sorcerer to follow him. “All right, this way. With the Compound pretty much completely destroyed, we’ve been keeping the Stones secured in the most ridiculous places no one would ever think to look.” Stopping at the door to the lab, he knocked, then opened the door and leaned into the room. “Two things: first, don’t worry about trying to upgrade the quantum navigator all that much. Strange dropped by, says he figured out how I can get where I need to go on my own.”

Bruce pushed up his glasses, which he didn’t actually need any more but liked to wear because they softened his image. “Strange is here?”

The Sorcerer Supreme waved at the scientists through the glass.

“I thought he was a neurosurgeon, not a quantum physicist,” Doctor Pym groused.

“Be nice, dear,” Doctor van Dyne chided. “I’m sure he has something important to contribute.”

“Mjolnir can channel the Space Stone,” Steve summarized.

Van Dyne thrust her hands into the air victoriously. “Pay up, suckers!”

Over the resultant grumbling, Steve added, “The second thing is, he’s come to borrow the Time Stone for a bit.”

“Yeah, go ahead.” Bruce waved a dinner-plate-sized hand dismissively, concentration already turned to fumbling for his wallet to settle whatever bet van Dyne had apparently just won.

A number of trailers had been delivered to the Compound site to serve as temporary housing and offices while the smoldering remains of the facility were excavated and rebuilt. Steve led Strange to the oversized trailer which currently served as Bruce’s quarters, then punched in his access code and ushered him inside. The room had been left a little messy, but not terribly so, and it was easy enough to step over to the bedside table and grab the wind-up alarm clock. Twisting the key on the back unlocked the face, revealing a glowing green gem nestled inside the housing.

“You’re keeping the Time Stone hidden inside of a clock,” Strange observed flatly.

“In the quarters of a guy known for being green,” Steve added. “Ridiculous, isn’t it?”

“Dare I ask where any of the others are?”

He grinned, holding the clock body out to the sorcerer. “Well the Space Stone is blue, but since Nebula’s gone off with the Guardians, that leaves it with me, since my uniform’s blue. Naturally, it’s in the dirt receptacle of my Roomba.”

—

“Why a Roomba?”

Grampa Steve’s eyes twinkled. “Because _space_ is a _vacuum_.”

Morgan cackled.

—

“Earth’s Mightiest Heroes,” Strange sighed. “Okay, give me a moment.” He drew out a mandala of light which enveloped the Time Stone and floated it from its receptacle into his amulet. As more patterns of energy surrounded his hands, he levitated from the ground and closed his eyes, seeming to shudder and phase out as he channeled the Stone’s power to look into many possible futures.

At long last, his form stabilized, and he touched back down to the ground. “Well, that was certainly _interesting_.” Cupping his hand, he pulled the Time Stone back out of the Eye of Agamotto and placed it carefully back into the alarm clock’s base. “Informative, though.”

Steve nodded, snapping the clock face back on and turning the key once more to secure it into place. “What did you learn?” he asked after he’d put the timepiece back on Bruce’s table and taken a step back.

“Let’s start with the broad view. Consider our universe to be the alpha reality.” He put his hands together, then drew them apart vertically so that a glowing white line hovered straight up and down, its glowing ends fading into the infinite. “And starting _here_ is the beta reality that was created when two Infinity Stones were removed and beta-Thanos followed beta-Nebula through our quantum tunnel.” Starting from the the vertical line, he drew a new thread tilted a few degrees outward so that its upper vanishing end was about a finger’s width away from the original line.

“The Thanos from that reality is now dead,” Steve realized, “so that timeline is safe from him going forward.”

“Indeed it is, but be mindful when you step foot into it: the Thanos from that timeline _must_ come through into our own, otherwise _you_ will become a paradox and your very existence—especially carrying several Infinity Stones—becomes the knife by which the fabric of the multiverse is ripped. That means no interfering in his capture of our Nebula.”

Steve frowned, crossing his arms over his chest again. “So replace the Stones and get out? I thought that if it wasn’t my own timeline, I couldn’t affect my own past.”

“Except where that reality intersects your personal past,” Strange corrected. “I’m sorry, but beta-Nebula and beta-Thanos coming back to our reality must happen in order to preserve your own timeline. Anything _beyond_ that, though…” He spread his hands wide, as though indicating everything else was open. “Wait until after our Nebula has been taken before you return the Power Stone, then make your way to Vormir to restore the Soul Stone. Whatever else you do or don’t do, that universe has at least been spared the threat of Thanos.”

“That’s probably enough.”

Strange shrugged. “Maybe… but moving on.” He pulled another upward ray from the center line, this one originating just a little below the beta starting point on the alpha line, but it followed the alpha line more closely. “This is the gamma reality, from which the Reality Stone and Mjolnir hail. This universe still has a Thanos, and if all you do is return the Stone and the hammer and nothing more, they may find a way to save themselves from our timeline’s fate—” the timeline’s loose end slid away from the alpha line “—or they may not.” At the last pronouncement, the gamma line curved back to meet the alpha line shortly after its original divergence.

Steve cocked his head. “Now you’re _advising_ me to interfere?”

The sorcerer spread his hands wide again, causing the gamma line to slide back to its distantly-separated state. “Other than Mjolnir and the Stone, you have no connection to this timeline and therefore have almost zero chance of instigating a paradox by either action or inaction.” He hesitated, then declared solemnly, “Their fate is yours to shape.”

—

“Did he interfere?”

“That’ll be a story for another time, Little Bug.”

Morgan giggled. “He did, didn’t he?”

“Ooooooh, yes,” Grampa Steve confirmed.

—

“That’s pretty heavy, Doc,” Steve admitted. “I never was good at backing down from a fight.”

“Use caution, though,” Strange warned. “At that point, you’ll still have three more Stones which must still be restored.”

Steve winced. “If I get myself killed before I finish the mission, then so much for the multiverse.”

Strange grimaced and shook his head. “Yeah, I wouldn’t recommend that.” He plucked at the timeline again, perhaps an inch below the gamma timeline. The new branch began by following very closely beside the alpha timeline, but just a little before reaching where the gamma timeline split, it took a sharper turn and vanished at a point more distant than even the expanded gamma timeline. “Finally, the delta reality’s first insertion point is in 1970; the Space Stone _must_ go back there first or else it will not be present _later_ in the timeline for subsequent events to occur, such as the arrival of Loki with the Mind Stone.”

“Makes sense.”

“From there, return the Time Stone, then the Mind Stone. Again, as with the gamma reality, once that has been accomplished, you may choose to interfere further—or not—at your discretion.”

Steve recalled the little prank he’d pulled on Sitwell and STRIKE while retrieving the Mind Stone. Amusing though it had been—and it did get him the scepter without having to thrash an elevator full of HYDRA agents again—he wondered what the long-term consequences of that would be on that world: with HYDRA’s cover blown two years early, what havoc would they wreak?

“Your mission will officially be complete at that point,” Strange finished, interrupting his meandering thoughts.

“Space, then Time, then Mind, got it,” Steve confirmed. Gesturing for the other man to follow him out of Bruce’s quarters, he asked, “Anything else?”

They stepped out into the sunlight, allowing the trailer door to lock itself behind them. “A final caution about the Stones: they are, of course, immensely powerful, but they work best when used minimally.” 

“How so?”

“For big things, they have to draw a lot of power. Using the Power Stone to destroy an entire planet with a touch is obviously a big, big thing, and trying to do so is likely to kill all but the most powerful of beings in the cosmos. However, the Power Stone could be used to augment a single person’s strength in a fairly modest way without wreaking havoc.”

“Like when Thanos punched Danvers,” Steve realized.

“Quite so. And each Stone does have certain limitations with regard to what it can do, especially without channeling a lethal amount of energy. The Time Stone, for instance, cannot undo anything which it and its bearer did not collectively witness, so any events which are already in motion when you arrive will remain in motion.”

—

“Like Newton’s First Law?”

Grampa Steve chuckled, waving his cane through the air to disperse the drawing of the timelines. “Strange’s First Law of the Quantum Realm?”

Morgan yawned, bunching her fingers in her sheets and pulling them up to her chin. “Uncle Bruce told me somethin’ ‘bout strange quarks, but I don’t ‘member right now. Can I ask him?”

“Tomorrow, Little Bug… it can wait until tomorrow.”

—

“Further, trying to reverse more than a few localized minutes could potentially require a fatal amount of energy be drawn, so again: exercise caution.”

“The KISS rule applies, huh?”

Strange smiled. “Exactly: keep it simple, Steve.”

The captain returned the smile, shaking his head. “Thanks for not using the usual second ‘s’, there.”

“I was under the impression that particular nickname was reserved for Sergeant Barnes’ exclusive use,” the sorcerer joked, getting a laugh out of Steve. 

“I’ll do my best not to live down to it this time. Despite the old song about me being ‘the man with the plan’, I was only ever good at _making_ plans, not necessarily sticking to them.”

“Flexibility is an art I’ve had to learn,” Strange admitted. “To go from having my whole life mapped out ahead of me and deliberately picking only the surgeries I was confident I could succeed in to…” He trailed off, holding his hands up so that Steve could see the minute tremors which still troubled him. “Well, it was a bit of a learning curve. Aside from the issue of being the only one who can return Mjolnir, that adaptability of yours is why you’re the best man for this mission, Captain.”

“I’ll get the job done,” Steve declared, holding out his right hand. Doctor Strange clasped it with his own, and the two men shook on the promise.

*       *       *

Soft breaths filled the silence after his last words, and Grampa Steve made to get up and leave the room.

Morgan was on the cusp of sleep, but not completely there yet. “Grampa Steve?” she murmured.

“What, sweetheart?”

“I’m glad we’re in the same universe.”

“Me too, Little Bug… me too.”

**Author's Note:**

> Morgan's rule-breaking may have been _slightly_ influenced by _Gifted_ , an absolute gem of a film starring Chris Evans as a loving caregiver and father-figure to his baby genius niece, played by the adorable and talented McKenna Grace. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it.
> 
> The framing of the story here (and as much as I can going forward) is very much inspired by _The Princess Bride_. If you haven't seen THAT, then please set about IMMEDIATELY correcting that deficiency.
> 
> Since inquiring minds are sure to ask, you'll find out the ridiculous hiding places of the other Stones in the next installment.
> 
> Finally, while this story does come a week after the previous installment and I have started on the next, I will not commit to a regular posting schedule because I don't want an unnecessary deadline imposing itself over maintaining quality and consistency in this tale. (Doesn't mean I won't try for a bit of a regular release, though.)


End file.
